The Third Sunday of Lent
March 23, 2014
Click here to listen to this
homily (mp3 file)
Each year on this Third Sunday of Lent, the Church gives us the story of the
Woman at the Well. With good reason. We are right in the midst of our
Lenten journey. Some among us are preparing for the waters of Baptism which will
flow over them just a month from now at the great Easter Vigil. The rest
of us are on our own baptismal journey because at Easter we will all solemnly
renew our baptismal promises, publicly owning that God is central in our lives
and that Jesus is for us the way, the truth, and the life.
In many ways, the story of the woman at the well is
a Baptism story. It's the story of a woman who discovered what the real thirst
of her life was, and it wasn’t what she thought it was. It's the story of
a woman who became a believer because she met Jesus -- encountered Jesus, came
to know Jesus -- and when she did, she realized that He was the one and the only
who could satisfy the deepest thirsts of her life, satisfy them in ways no one
else ever had or ever could. It’s the story of a woman who turned her life over
to Jesus decisively, almost recklessly.
The Church would like us to see something of
ourselves in that woman, but we have to look closely to do so. Look at her
all by herself at the village well under the blazing midday sun. There's a
sad isolation about her, isn’t there? A loneliness. She's not popular in
her village -- that much is for sure; if she were, she would have drawn her
water in the cool of the morning with the rest of the women of the village and
not in the blistering heat of the noonday sun. No, she's an outsider this
woman, an outcast, and her life is out- of-order. She's been running from one
dissatisfying relationship to another, and no one of them has brought her
happiness.
And then Jesus comes along and challenges her --
gently if a little bluntly -- to take a new look at the thirsts of her life: to
stop running, to stop living only on the surface, to stop drinking from wells
that promise to satisfy (and may seem at first to satisfy), but which in the end
only make her more thirsty. Jesus challenges her to turn from all of this
and to begin drawing water from a well that gives "living water," as he calls
it: "A spring of water welling up from within to eternal life.” And, of course,
He is that well.
Jesus challenges us to the same, my friends.
We are really not all that different from the Samaritan woman. Our lives,
like hers, can be isolated, unfocused, disordered, cut off from others, or so
completely immersed in the lives of others that they are hardly our lives. Often
our lives lack a quiet and peaceful center. Too often there is an almost
frantic quality about them. We may not be running from one relationship to
another as the woman did (although that’s possible), but "run" we surely do. We
run from ourselves, from our responsibilities, from things that seem just too
difficult, from healthy relationships, even sometimes from God. We run and
we thirst. And today, Jesus let us run right into him, and when we do, we find
living water, complete refreshment, the only water that will ever satisfy all
our thirsts.
My friends in Christ, the Samaritan woman, after
many attempts at love, found in Jesus one love -- one single, satisfying,
faithful love that was deeper than any of the shallow loves she had settled for
previously. And we can find the same. Or, even better, Jesus is the one
who finds us. He does! He finds us right now, and he takes delight in us,
and he invites us to sit with him at table, the table of the Eucharist, and he
says to us, "Whoever drinks the water I give will never again be thirsty."
Father Michael G. Ryan
